1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for fabricating a thin film transistor and a transparent thin film transistor. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for fabricating a thin film transistor using local oxidation wherein a portion of a transparent metal oxide layer is locally oxidized to be converted into a semiconductor layer so that the oxidized portion of the transparent metal oxide layer can be used as a channel region and the unoxidized portions of the transparent metal oxide layer can be used as source and drain electrodes, as well as a transparent thin film transistor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Thin film transistors are generally fabricated by forming a gate electrode on a substrate, forming a gate insulating layer thereon, and forming a channel region and source/drain electrodes on the gate insulating layer.
The steps of forming the channel region using a semiconductor and forming the source/drain electrodes using an electrically conductive material are separately carried out and require an increased number of processes in the fabrication method. For example, the formation of the channel region and the source/drain electrodes involve a number of processes, e.g., deposition and patterning through a mask, which disadvantageously incur increased fabrication costs and make the fabrication procedure complicated.